Recognizing Roamware’s Thought Leadership in International Mobile Connectivity and Roaming

8th November, The Hague, Netherlands – The European Patent Office today recognized Roamware, Inc.’s thought leadership in the field of international mobile connectivity and roaming by awarding Roamware exclusive patent rights for its invention of a “Method and System for Cellular Network Traffic Redirection” (European Patent Number 1527653).  The invention, now embraced by the GSM Association’s mobile industry standards known as “Steering of Roaming”, empowers a mobile roamer’s home network operator’s system to direct any of its subscribers to roam on its preferred roaming partner’s network when using their mobile phones abroad. 

The network-based approach that Roamware first created in its Roamware Traffic Redirection™ systems now permits the world’s mobile network operators to apportion outbound roaming traffic to each other as needed, in a manner that works in all countries, for all roaming partner networks, on all mobile handsets.  Rapidly emerging as the world leader in international mobile connectivity and roaming, Roamware’s systems are now installed in over 300 mobile operator networks in more than 120 countries around the world, serving nearly one billion mobile users.

In reaching today’s decision, Europe joins the governments of the United States, Singapore and India in granting Roamware exclusive patent rights in the field of steering-of-roaming.  (Singapore P-No. 109326 [WO 2004/014101], India Patent No. 81/DELNP/2005, US Patent No. 7,072,651)  Roamware’s steering of roaming patent applications are pending in a number of other countries, and Roamware currently boasts 75 families of patent applications and over 130 patent applications filed worldwide, in addition to the several it has already been issued in various nations.

Roamware invented network-based steering of roaming, and the main techniques of traffic shaping and traffic steering employed by the world’s mobile operators today.  The company deployed the first actual live installations of its Roamware Traffic Redirection systems in Europe in 2003. 

“Before we invented our Traffic Redirection – network-based steering of roaming systems – the marketplace for international roaming was somewhat inefficient.  Operators negotiating bilateral roaming agreements with each other actually had no effective way of promising each other any certain volume or type of traffic.  We created Traffic Redirection to give home operators real control over how their outbound roaming traffic is apportioned to foreign operators.  We are proud to have played this role in creating a transparent and truly competitive marketplace for international roaming, to the benefit of mobile subscribers worldwide,” comments Roamware co-founder and CTO John Jiang, co-inventor of the patent granted in Europe today.

“Very few technology and innovation providers are as fortunate as Roamware, to be deployed all over the world, in so many of the world’s leading mobile operators,” explains Roamware CEO Bobby Srinivasan.  “Traffic Redirection was only the beginning.   Our global breadth and our expanding technical expertise permits us continually to create, and be the first to market with the types of unifying technology solutions that bridge communications communities the world over.”